Surviving
by KeganHorse
Summary: Sakura proves that she can span the twenty paces Naruto and Sasuke always kept between them and her.
1. Surviving

Hi! So, I was awake for about 24 hours the other day due to my new medication, so at about 6 a.m. and hour 23, I decided to write a little bit. It was inspired by a post on tumblr, where Sakura had to die in order for Sasuke to realize his full potential. It is unpolished and the product of a slightly delirious mind, but tumblr seemed to like it, so I hope you will as well!

Enjoy and remember, I don't own Naruto. Or much of anything, really :

* * *

She couldn't move. The sheer presence of Kaguya alone was enough to intimidate her body into complete submission. She tried to flex her left hand, feel the comforting tightness of the leather as it stretched against her knuckles. She couldn't even manage that.

Next to her, Sakura could tell that Kakashi was in much the same state. They wouldn't last long at all if Kaguya were to set her sight on them.

But she didn't. Her attention was still solely focused on the two boys before her, attacking her relentlessly. It wasn't enough. Sakura could see by the way Naruto's light dimmed and his face formed into a scowl reminiscent of Sasuke. In turn, Sasuke's speed had fallen and his rinnegan had begun a slow, steady leaking of blood.

This was the end, she was certain.

Surviving against Pain and Obito and Madara, all of that was by the skin of her teeth and only possible thanks to her teammates. The same teammates who were quickly being overpowered by the bored and callous goddess who had come to end the world she was responsible for.

Kakashi grunted beside her as he dropped to one knee, exhaustion threatening to overtake the older man. She took a moment to study him. He looked exactly the same as he had the first time she met him, ruggedly handsome even despite his facial mask and white hair. She almost wished he still had the sharingan, though. Both his eyes, dark and wide and bared for the world to see, reflected the pain and anguish he must have been hiding all these years under the cover of his hitai-ate.

She heard a sharp curse and the sound of rubble flying. She turned her head just in time to see Naruto careening through the air, Kaguya seeming to have had enough. She heard the sickening crunch of Naruto hitting the ground over a hundred yards away and gave an involuntary cry. If this had been a movie, her small noise would have drawn the wrath of the evil goddess, but in reality Kaguya was only interested in the big players. Having dispatched the sun, she bared down on the man who threatened her claim over the moon.

"No," Sakura croaked, barely able to get the words past her mouth. She could see it. Somehow she knew exactly what was going to happen even though Kaguya had yet to take a single step towards him. Sasuke's stamina was gone, and no matter what he would never be able to dodge the blow.

It had taken a long time to become who she was now, who she wanted to be. Every time she had managed to take one step forward, Sasuke and Naruto would run twenty paces ahead of her. But that wasn't so far now, was it? And that was exactly where she needed to be, twenty feet in front of her, shielding the only man she would ever love from the deadly strike. So that was where she went.

It didn't hurt. All the medical training she had received from Konoha had warned her about painless wounds – they were more often than not critical. However, she couldn't help it when in the back of her mind she repeated over and over to herself that it must have missed. She must have failed and Sasuke had been killed after all.

Her head lolled to the side and planted her face roughly into the course material of Sasuke's shirt. She heard the deafening scream tear from Naruto's throat, but couldn't see a thing beyond white cotton. She felt her shoulders being jostled so roughly that a giggle burst from her lips. How could his grip be the only thing she could feel when she was certain she had a hole in her chest?

"Sakura," his voice was rough and husky with exhaustion and fear. He shook her again, saying her name twice more before she could find the strength to turn her head and peer up at him from where she lay in his lap.

"Sasuke-kun," she said slowly, forcing the words through her throat and past the hot blood that was dribbling down her chin. She had the brief thought that she must look like a drooling idiot, salivating over the gorgeous Uchiha the way she had when they were younger.

"Sakura," he said, his voice cracking slightly. "Why did you do that."

"What?" Her voice slurred, never quite finishing the word. Her vision began to blur, colors running together in a beautiful midnight sky of black and purple with the faint red sunset still bleeding along the horizon. It was so beautiful, she wished Sai would paint it for her.

"Why," his voice cracked again and she felt his grip tighten, felt his other hand cradle her head as her neck failed to support its weight any longer. "Why did you get in the way? I told you not to. I told you…" Sasuke continued to repeat his words, each utterance become less and less coherent to Sakura.

With the last ounce of strength she could muster, Sakura raised her leaden arms and pulled the glove off her left hand, curling her fingers slightly as she rested them against his cheek. She focused the tiny amount of Chakra within her body to her eyes, sharpening her vision just enough to see his face one last time.

"Sasu," she tried, willing her tongue to work for just a few moments longer. "Sasu…kun."

She felt his fingers trace her cheeks and wondered if there were tears beneath his fingers. She hadn't wanted to cry in front of him.

"Sasu-kun, I'm sorry," she could barely hear her own voice, but she had to say it. There would be no more chances. "I love you, Sasu," In her foggy mind she wasn't sure if she was crying too hard to finish his name or if it was a side effect of dying that she lost control of her voice. "I will love you forever."

She felt her hand drop, heard Sasuke scream her name once more and shake her harder than ever before but it was too late. She was already gone. The last thing that passed through her mind was that Sasu would have been a cute nickname for him, and how when she said she would love him forever, she meant it. Her love would not die with her body.

* * *

So, how was it? Leave a review and let me know! I might do a little more with this, but as it stands now, it is a one-shot.

Btw, below is the link to the theory someone posted. It is a pretty interesting read. Just get rid of the parenthesis I added that look suspiciously like tublr is motor-boating a pair of boobies...

post/81515897855/theory-sakura-is-going-to-die-im-sorry-this-is-so


	2. Death

It was a peculiar kind of weightlessness, one that left her feeling confused as to whether or not she was floating or simply no longer existed as a physical being.

Sakura quickly decided that she didn't like it.

Her attempt to flex her fingers, a nervous habit she had developed over the years of being a kunochi, left her frustrated at the lack of response. Her darting glances from side to side merely showed her the large field of nothingness that surrounded her.

Dead. That's what she was, and this particular form of death wasn't something she had in mind when she sacrificed herself. She had envisioned nonexistence, that much was true, but an all encompassing one, one that took her mind along with her body.

"Sakura."

She started, as much as she could without any skin to jump out of, and immediately set about her pointless search for the voice that had spoken. It was male, older and vaguely familiar.

"Calm yourself, girl," the voice sounded amused as it prickled at the back of her memory. She had heard this voice recently, but the tone was all wrong and her head was rather foggy at the moment. "Take a deep breath and concentrate."

She tried to ask what she was supposed to breathe with, having no lungs, when she was surprised to feel her chest swell with the intake of air. That could only happen if she in fact was anchored to a body. And alive.

"Where am I?" Her voice was breathy, a tad bit more meek than she would have liked.

"Not sure," the man answered, that same amused tone playing in the air between them.

She concentrated - as he had told her to do, though he neglected to specify on what, exactly – on his voice. It was rough, though not in the way that suggested disuse, deep and almost seemed to reverberate around her. She could feel it in her lungs as though she were breathing in the words he spoke, and slowly that sensation began to travel elsewhere.

"You sacrificed yourself for Sasuke," she felt it as her shoulders were formed and the man's voice continued to sculpt the rib cage around her heart. She knew who this man was. "As did I."

"Obito-san," she murmured into the darkness, only it was no longer dark. She saw him a few yards before her, his whole right side bandaged, sitting on a fallen tree before a small campfire.

He looked up and smiled at her, a smile she imagined had once been rather handsome. She could see the dim light that had once been in his remaining eye, a flicker that still burned bright in the bright blue eyes of her boisterous best friend's. Except that this optimism existed in the dark black depths of an Uchiha, something she never dreamed of witnessing.

"It seems our shared sacrifices have brought us here." Obito cocked his head, a playful gesture for Sakura to join him on the log. It was odd, watching an Uchiha so flippantly speak to her. Her long-ago interactions with Sasuke and brief run-ins with Itachi had not prepared her for such a normal occurrence.

She sat stiffly at his side, watching the fire crackle and spark. "Where is here?"

Obito brought his hand to his chin, rubbing it in a fashion she remembered her sensei often doing when he made up his stories. "Hell, I suppose," he twisted his face in mock seriousness. "Must have been an awful sin, saving that boy, if two good people such as ourselves were sent here."

Sakura snorted despite herself, unable to reconcile the man before her with the one she had known him as. The masked-man who had called himself Tobi and Madara and attempted to destroy the shinobi world. She couldn't quite hide her flinch when Obito shifted, turning a bit to face her.

"When we were younger," Obito began, obviously ignoring the baffled look that had taken place upon his audience's face. "Kakashi and I didn't quite get along. He was perfect – a prodigy – and I hated him. But Rin," he paused, shaking his head slowly before continuing, "Rin loved Kakashi."

Sakura attempted to school her face into some sort of reasonable expression, something that would be befitting of this...whatever it was. She wasn't quite successful, but Obito continued despite that.

"When I was...when I died, I trusted Kakashi to protect her, and when she died I blamed him. But that was wrong. I should have been there, I should have come home the moment I woke up."

He stared at her then, as though willing her to understand, but for all the times Sakura had been praised for her intelligence she just couldn't see where he was going with this.

"I'm sorry," she spoke quietly, still unsure of how to go about speaking with this man. "I'm not sure I follow."

If she had been worried that her inability to comprehend would upset him, she was mistaken. Obito threw his head back and laughed. A deep, throaty laugh that reminded her once more of Naruto. A young, carefree and happy boy.

"I know that what Sasuke has done must hurt," Obito spoke to the fire this time, the smile still plastered across his face. "But he came back. It took a while, but he did."

Sakura felt as though her existence were being threatened again, Obito's words clawing at her throat as if they had scorched the air she was breathing. She felt the tears burning her eyes and the once weightless feeling she had decidedly disliked reversed, leaving her with the impression that she was being crushed by the ten-tails itself.

"Ah," Obito looked at her, smile widening. "Looks as though we are done here. Good luck, Sakura. Tell Kakashi I'm off to say sorry to Rin."

With no time to even try and decipher his words, Sakura found herself gasping for air.

"Sakura!"

She heard three different voices call out to her, but at the moment all she could be bothered with was flexing her right hand and feeling the leather pull against her knuckles before raising her bare left palm against her intact chest.

And then she was crushed against the dirty shirt of Sasuke Uchiha, his hands gripping her shoulders so painfully that she cried out.

"Idiot," he whispered harshly as Naruto uttered an indignant response from somewhere behind them. "Stupid girl, why would you do that?"

Sakura wasn't sure she could answer yet, her mouth still tinged with the taste of her own blood. She pressed her entrapped hands against his chest and was able to exert the tiniest amount of pressure, but it was enough for him to loosen his old. She lay cradled in his arms, head resting against his shoulder in a way that she suspected he had purposely done so that she couldn't see his face.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto looked at her seriously after squeezing her in a half hug – the best he could do given Sasuke's possessive stance. "What happened? Where'd the hole go?"

Her left hand played with the ruined fabric just above her heart, still damp with blood. A flash of fire and a one-eyed smile. Her eyes snapped to Kakashi.

"Rin," she spoke, her voice rough. She watched as both her sensei's eyes sprang open wide, dark and matching. "Obito said he wished he would have come back sooner, but he was going to go and apologize to her now."

Kakashi turned his face away.

"Izanami," Sasuke spoke directly above her head. "Somehow, he must have been able to perform Izanami using his remaining Sharingan. The action was so that you would survive, and since you accepted your fate to live, the loop was instantly negated."

Unable to understand what Sasuke was saying at the moment, and still reeling from being brought back to life in his arms, Sakura just smiled, leaning her weight into the boy. She could tell that Kaguya was gone and that the war was over. She could also see that Kakashi was dangerously close to either crying or going on some sort of spree.

Questions could wait. For now, her team came first.

* * *

So, this is a while later. But I thought I might add to Surviving, and I finally did. I really like it. I mean, the first half I am super proud of, but perhaps interaction between a group is not my strongest point. I'll have to work on it.

But for now, I hope you all enjoy. And hey, after Obito helping out Kakashi in the manga, I can only assume that Izanami isn't too far out of the range of Narutoverse possibility. MAGIC.


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